A customer entering a small neighborhood store may be greeted personally by a store employee. The store employee may offer the customer assistance in locating a particular item or may suggest an alternative product if the item named by the customer is not available. A store that offers such personalized service is likely to benefit from repeat visits and repeat purchases by a loyal customer base.
A person entering a large retail establishment such as a supermarket, building supply store, home accessories store, or other warehouse-style or “big box” stores may have a very different experience compared to the personalized service that may be available from a neighborhood store. Upon entering the store, the shopper may have difficulty identifying the aisle or department of the store where a product of interest may be found. Descriptive signs at the ends of aisles may be too far away to read or may follow an organizational approach not understood by the shopper, causing some shoppers to wander the aisles looking for a desired product. Some stores may place related products in widely-separated locations in the store to increase the amount of time shoppers spend in the store, a strategy that may increase sales volume from impulse purchases.
A shopper may have difficulty locating an alternative product if the product originally being sought is not found. In an effort to reduce operating costs, the store may have few employees available for answering inquiries from customers about product locations, product features, or alternative products. Should a suitable product be located, the customer may stand in a long or slow-moving check-out line to pay for selected items, either a manual check-out line where a cashier scans purchased items one-by-one and collects payment from the customer, or a self-check-out line where the customer must first determine how to operate the product code scanner and credit card reader used by the store, scan items one by one, and bag items himself or herself. When the self-check-out station does not recognize a scanned product, as happens with unfortunate regularity, the customer may have to wait for a store employee to resolve the problem.
Many shoppers view a lack of support staff, long lines, difficulty in finding the physical locations of products, and tedious and possibly error-prone check-out procedures as obstacles to doing business with brick-and-mortar retailers. Consumers have responded by directing an increasingly large fraction of their purchases to on-line retailers, where a customer need not waste time travelling to a store, finding the physical location of an item in the store, or standing in a check-out line. Brick-and-mortar stores need to find ways to deliver a more personalized shopping experience to retain customers, improve shopper satisfaction while visiting a store, and compete against online retailers.